Last update - 02:22 14/06/2007
Student helps IDF with Sudanese refugees
By Mijal Grinberg
A group of Sudanese refugees - eight men, seven women and 11 children - were sitting on the pavement in Be'er Sheva's industrial zone on Monday night. The army, which had found them crossing the Egyptian border, had brought them here an hour earlier.
Some 100 Sudanese refugees have arrived in Israel this week. A total of 700 Africans seeking asylum, a third of them from Sudan, have arrived since the beginning of May. The number of refugees entering Israel has increased dramatically since the Prisons Service stopped jailing most of them on arrival. But Israel has not figured out what to do with them yet.
Elisheva Milikovsky, 24, a social work student, has taken on responsibility for coordination between the refugees, the army, hotel chains offering them work and aid organizations.
She arranged for Atchuk, 28, Rin, 38, and their toddler son Yosef to spend Tuesday night at the home of two friends of hers. Atchuk and Rin fled Sudan six years ago. They met in Egypt, where Yosef was born. As Christians, they found the country inhospitable and left for Israel.
Milikovsky met them after the army told her a Sudanese family whose son had chicken pox was on its way to Soroka Hospital. She found the three sitting on a bench there. Her calls to Be'er Sheva's social services went unanswered, and the three were still sitting on the bench when night fell.
"It's hard to know what to do," said Milikovsky. "If we find them a place for the night, we're helping the state dodge its responsibility. But how can we leave them there?"
As she helped Atchuk spread ointment on Yosef's sores, her cell phone rang again. Club Hotel in Eilat was sending a bus to the border to collect 18 refugees. Milikovsky arranged for the bus to pick up this family as well.
Her next stop was the Beit Yatziv guest house, which had taken in a refugee family for two days at the request of the city's social services. The family's time had expired. Milikovsky found them outside, with their bags: Amos, Theresa and their three little girls.
This family had crossed the border at the beginning of the week, and a bus had taken them to an Isrotel hotel in Eilat with nine other refugees. But the hotel wanted only the single men and sent the family back to Be'er Sheva.
Milikovsky's phone rang again - an army official was calling to tell her the Immigration Police had refused to take 16 refugees off the army's hands and that they were being dropped off at the Be'er Sheva bus terminal. She called someone to stay with the family until accommodations were found. Eventually a farmer took them in.